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Scientists Find a New Moon Orbiting Uranus

A team of astronomers has found what appears to be a previously undiscovered moon orbiting Uranus. If confirmed, this finding would mean the gigantic blue-green ice planet would have 29 moons. The discovery was made using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), extending the instrument’s list of achievements and raising expectations that other new discoveries might be made within the solar system. With JWST’s infrared camera, the researchers took ten 40-minute exposures of Uranus and detected a

Astronomers Discover a Previously Hidden Moon Orbiting Uranus

Astronomers spotted a never-before-seen, bite-sized moon orbiting Uranus, bringing the ice giant’s follower count to 29. The moon is so small and faint—well below the detection threshold of NASA’s Voyager 2 probe—that scientists believe Uranus may host many more undiscovered, tiny moons. The moon, provisionally named S/2025 U1, first entered the view of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on February 2, 2025. Further imaging led by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) shows that it sits at

James Webb Spots Mysterious Object Orbiting Uranus

"It’s like staring into the headlight of a car and trying to look at a fly." Circle Strafe NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has spotted a tiny moon orbiting Uranus, expanding the number of the planet's known satellites to 29. In early February, the space observatory's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) caught the minuscule and still-unnamed object orbiting the gas giant at a distance of 35,000 miles. "It’s a small moon but a significant discovery, which is something that even NASA’s Voyager 2 sp

The James Webb Space Telescope Finds New Moon Orbiting Uranus

No joke: Science has found a new teeny, tiny moon orbiting Uranus. NASA announced on Tuesday that the James Webb Space Telescope found yet another moon floating around Uranus, an ice giant that already had 13 other known moons. The discovery was made thanks to images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. A team from the Southwest Research Institute noticed an unfamiliar object that appeared to be orbiting Uranus. The images have been stitched together in a slideshow on YouTube of the moon, w

Webb telescope spots a new moon orbiting Uranus

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) continues to bear fruit. Images captured by the floating watchtower revealed a previously unknown moon orbiting Uranus. The discovery, made on February 2, increases the planet's moon tally to 29. The moon was easy to miss: It's only an estimated six miles wide. It's located about 35,000 miles from Uranus' center, orbiting the planet's equatorial plane. The moon has a nearly circular orbit, suggesting it could have formed near its current location. NASA's s

Scientists Say That Uranus Appears to Have a Girlfriend

When checking out Uranus, scientists discovered something exciting: that the planet appears to have a long-term... well, call it a situationship. In a new, yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper flagged by Universe Today, an international group of researchers detailed finding a so-called "Centaur" — a small, icy and rocky body that sits between Uranus and Neptune and is designated as a minor planet — that appears to have been keeping up with Uranus in a delicate cosmic dance for thousands or even millio

Uranus Leaks More Heat Than We Thought

When Voyager 2 flew past Uranus in 1986, the spacecraft detected a surprisingly low level of internal heat from the planet. Since then, scientists believed Uranus to be the odd one out in our solar system’s family of giant planets—the others being Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune—who all tend to emit more heat than they absorb from sunlight. Now, a new study suggests that scientists may have had the wrong idea about Voyager 2’s data: Uranus does have an internal heat source similar to its planetary

A Closer Look At Uranus’s Moons Reveals a Surprising Dark Side

The moons that orbit Uranus are already known to have unusual characteristics: some are heavily cratered, others have tectonic features or a patchwork of ridges and cliffs. Using the Hubble space telescope, scientists took a closer look at the surface of Uranus’s four largest moons and discovered something rather unexpected. For the study, a team of astronomers went searching for signs of interactions between Uranus’s magnetic field and its four largest moons: Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Obero